The company said it has been communicating with the Axiom investor group and is keen to locate the “2000 or so” investors into the product.
Those affected are urged to contact Gareth Fatchett at [email protected] or Tobias Haynes at [email protected].
The Axiom Legal Financing Fund was suspended in September 2012 after Miami-based publication Offshore Alert made a series of allegations about the way the fund was managed.
The magazine also suggested that the investment manager of the £117m UCIS fund was Timothy Schools, a former director at Tangerine Investment Management.
In June last year, the funds receiver, Grant Thornton, produced a 65 page court document which revealed the full extent of concerns over the fund’s underlying investments.
The document revealed that around 75% of the fund’s assets were lent to just three so-called “panel law firms”.
Two of these, Ashton Fox and Tandem, are now in insolvency proceedings.
It said the loans were often made on “overly optimistic” expectations.
It also highlighted concerns that “an individual who is a director of the investment manager [redacted] is also a director of the only two law firms to have received loans in the period [redacted]”.
The company pointed out that there was substantial evidence to suggest that the money lent to the law firms was misused when, under the terms of strict litigation fund agreements, it should have been lent specifically to fund cases.
“In some cases monies advanced were substantially used for entirely inappropriate purposes,” it added. “This includes the settlement of company debts being pursued by way of a winding up petition and settlement of pre-existing bank debt.”
It went on to add that it was negotiating with all the law firms involved.
